A catalyst for visibility and collaboration: The power of multi-journal collections

Author: Siobhan Bates

For researchers across every discipline, making sure your work reaches a broad, interdisciplinary audience is key, not only for recognition, but also for real-world impact. This is even more important if you’re struggling to find a home for your research because you work across disciplines or in an emerging area of research. At Springer Nature, we value all valid research and one of the ways we support researchers like you, is by publishing multi-journal collections. In this blog, we outline what they are and how they can help you reach a wide readership, grow your network, and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and communication.

Multi-journal collections as a new approach

This is the vision behind Springer Nature’s multi-journal collections (MJCs). Designed to be responsive, and focused on topical themes, multi-journal collections bring together research from across multiple journals to break down disciplinary boundaries. By widening access to diverse fields of study, they drive interdisciplinary thinking and spark future collaboration.

“It’s wonderful to observe how every cross-journal collection can harness the unique strengths and expertise of participating journals, ensuring that manuscripts can find their ideal publishing destination!”
 — Yanyu Zhang, Team Lead, Collections Management & Acquisition at Springer Nature

What is a multi-journal collection?

A multi-journal collection, also referred to as a cross-journal collection, curates newly published articles from two or more journals around a shared topic. By gathering related research across disciplines, these collections make it easier for researchers to discover insights outside their traditional areas of expertise.

At Springer Nature, we’ve seen how multi-journal collections have proven to be valuable for researchers across disciplines at all stages of their career. Finding the right publishing home can be challenging if your research focuses on a trending topic or falls across multiple disciplines. In these instances, your work may not fit neatly into the scope of an existing journal.

Multi-journal collections, such as Marine heatwaves, Promoting youth mental health, and Child and adolescent health help solve this problem by offering a broader, interdisciplinary platform for your research. These collections also offer you the opportunity to connect with the collections guest editors and experts that are also conducting research on your research topic that you may not have otherwise discovered.

Boosting research visibility

One of the biggest advantages of multi-journal collections is the significant boost they offer to research visibility.

Grouped by topic, the articles are easier for readers to discover, leading to more citations and broader recognition. Many Springer Nature multi-journal collections are also open access (OA), removing barriers so that anyone, anywhere, can read, cite, and build upon the research enhancing the likelihood that the research will make a real-world impact. By removing barriers this enhanced accessibility further improves discoverability, especially on platforms that recommend content based on search behaviour and relevance.

Additionally, because multi-journal collections centre around trending topics, they naturally attract audiences already invested in the theme. When one paper in a collection gains traction, it often brings the entire collection, and all contributing authors, into the spotlight. Multi-journal collections need to contain research from a minimum of two journals, but they can often be a collaboration between many more journals. One notable example is Reducing poverty and its consequences, with open calls for papers from across 14 journals to support the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty and the UN Sustainable Development Goals: SDG1 and SDG10.

Promotion doesn’t happen by chance: Springer Nature’s Editorial, Publishing, Collections Management & Acquisition, and Marketing teams, among others, along with Guest Editors and contributing authors, actively promote collections through conferences, social media, blogs, newsletters, and more. This unified effort amplifies the impact of your research even further.

Driving collaboration across disciplines

Recent years have shown us the power of multidisciplinary research, from responding to pandemics to advancing sustainability initiatives and navigating the implications of artificial intelligence.

Multi-journal collections foster this kind of vital collaboration by connecting researchers across fields. They encourage new partnerships, drive fresh insights, and accelerate solutions that wouldn’t easily emerge within the confines of a single discipline.

By facilitating the exchange of ideas, multi-journal collections also speed up the transfer of knowledge between academic communities, helping new discoveries reach broader audiences faster.

At Springer Nature, we believe that every piece of research has the potential to contribute to progress. By grouping interdisciplinary articles together, multi-journal collections create opportunities for breakthrough innovations, such as combining expertise from biology, engineering, and computer science to revolutionize medical technology.

Ready to find out more?
Explore Springer Nature’s Collections and see which have open calls for papers.